Introduction to the College of Coastal Agricultural Sciences, GDOU
The History of Development
Guangdong Ocean University’s College of Coastal Agricultural Sciences has more than 60 years history. The college started as a branch of South China Agricultural College at Zhanjiang in 1956. In 1980, Zhanjiang Agricultural College was established with the approval of the National Education Council. In 1997, Zhanjiang Agricultural College and Zhanjiang Fisheries College were merged to form Zhanjiang Ocean University, a secondary level college of agriculture. In June 2005, it was renamed Guangdong Ocean University College of Agriculture. In December 2019, Yuan Longping an academician and a man credited as the "father of hybrid rice" in the world personally wrote the name to College of Coastal Agricultural Sciences of Guangdong Ocean University. Insisting on ensuring the security of national food and arable lands, promoting the revitalization of rural areas, the College has carried out research and development in various fields of plant science, animal science and technology for decades. It has also achieved a lot of scientific research results, trained a number of new agricultural talents with the characteristics of coastal agriculture and provided talent security, scientific and technological support for the development of Guangdong Province and China’s agriculture sector.
Majors
The college has two first-class master's programs in Crop Science (supported by South China Center of National Salt and Alkali Resistant Rice Technology Innovation Center), and Animal Husbandry (its second level discipline of animal genetics, breeding and reproduction is the ninth round of key disciplines with characteristics and established by the “Pearl River Scholars” in Guangdong Province,). There are 7 second level master programs in Crop Genetics and Breeding, Tropical Horticulture Crop Science, Crop Cultivation and Farming, Crop Ecology, Animal Nutrition and Feed Science, Animal Genetics Breeding and Reproduction, Animal Production, and 2 professional master programs in agriculture (Agronomy and Seed Industry, Resource Utilization and Plant Protection, Animal Husbandry) and landscape architecture. The college has 4 departments including Animal Science, Veterinary Medicine, Biotechnology and Landscape Architecture, and 8 undergraduate majors including Animal Science, Veterinary Medicine, Forestry, Agronomy, Biotechnology, Landscape Architecture, Horticulture and Plant Protection. Animal science major is a national-level specialty construction point, a national-level comprehensive reform pilot and a first-class professional program in Guangdong Province. The Veterinary Medicine is a demonstration major for the training of applied talents in Guangdong Province. The Horticultural major is a specialty construction point and comprehensive reform pilot major in Guangdong Province. The Biotechnology major is a provincial strategic emerging demonstration specialty. Animal Reproduction, Veterinary Clinical Diagnosis, Animal Histology and Embryology, and Animal Production are excellent resource sharing courses in Guangdong Province.
Teaching and Research Platform
The College has a relatively complete and systematic teaching and research experiment platform. The experimental teaching center of the college consists of six laboratories (with 28 sub-offices) including basic agricultural biology laboratory, crop laboratory, landscape and horticultural laboratory, agricultural resources and environment laboratory, animal science laboratory and veterinary medicine laboratory. There are other training centers (bases) like crop base, biotechnology base, landscape and horticultural base, animal science base, teaching animal hospital, agricultural ecological park on campus and more than 70 off campus training bases. The College also has provincial experimental teaching platforms such as the Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center for Animal Health Production in Guangdong Province and the Experimental Teaching and Demonstration Center for Plant Production in Guangdong Province. The College houses the ASEAN Sea Water Rice Research Institute of China, which was established to promote the construction and development of the coastal agricultural discipline group. It has offices for international germplasm resources and bioinformatics research center, genetic breeding research center, ecological environment and precision improvement research center, ecological high-value breeding research center, functional food research and development center and market development and technology extension center. There is an agricultural biotechnology research institute with integration for hybrid rice breeding research room, sugarcane research room, forest and fruit seed industry engineering research room, animal nutrition research room, plant protection technology center, biotechnology application research room, molecular genetics and breeding research room, agricultural technology extension center, ecological research room and plant pathology research room. The center for high-efficiency production engineering and technology of tropical crops is the engineering and technology research center of Guangdong Province (provincial key laboratory). The Guangdong Hongjiang Orange Science and Technology Innovation Center, the Leizhou Goat Science and Technology Innovation Center in Guangdong Province, the Guangdong Province Special Poultry Ecological Health Culture Science and Technology Innovation Center as the provincial collaborative innovation platform, and the training base for the training of cooperative students in tropical horticulture and agriculture is a national university students' out-of-school practice education base.
The Faculty
The college attaches great importance to the training and development of teachers. There are 136 faculty and staff, including 107 teaching and scientific research personnel, 36 with senior professional titles, 34 with deputy professional senior titles, 75 with doctoral degrees out of which 5 are doctoral degree supervisors and 49 master’s degree supervisors. One expert enjoys the special allowance of the State Council, eight are selected as Guangdong Province sailing program talents, two awarded as "famous teachers of colleges and universities in Guangdong Province", two national excellent teachers, one national "knowledge-based" advanced individual, four selected provincial training objects of “ thousand, hundred and ten excellent” projects of colleges and universities in Guangdong Province, eight experts of modern agricultural industry and technology system in Guangdong Province.
Academician Yuan Longping was appointed as the distinguished academician of our university and honorary Dean of ASEAN Sea Rice Research Institute of China. Chen Risheng, the discoverer of "sea rice 86", the sea rice research expert, researcher Ma Guohui, a famous rice research expert and Hwa-Chain R. Wang a life-long professor of the University of Tennessee were all appointed as distinguished faculty members. The College continued to hire top talent professor, life-long professor of Lincoln University, New Zealand, Prof. Ravi Gooneratne who has been awarded as an "Honorary Citizen of Zhanjiang City". In the past 3 years, the college has introduced 34 high-level talents, including 4 professors and doctoral supervisor and 30 doctors.
Talent Training
The college adheres to the principle of undergraduate education and vigorously develops postgraduate education. For the country's 18 provinces (cities and districts) in China, there are 2679 full-time undergraduates and more than 200 postgraduate students (including 16 international students). The college has further improved the education, evaluation, guarantee, service and innovation system of student training, realized standardized management of student work, formed a new situation of professional skills and discipline competition with "one major one specialty and one department one brand", promoted the construction of study style and teaching style, and solidly promoted quality education. In recent years, the employment rate of both undergraduate and graduate students has been kept above 93%. Graduates have high overall quality and are highly praised by employers.
Scientific Research
The College vigorously promotes scientific research and technological development. In recent years, existing teachers have obtained more than 300 scientific research projects of various kinds, including more than 40 national level scientific research projects such as NSFC and national major special projects, more than 100 provincial and ministerial level projects which amounts to more than 90 million yuan of funds received. More than 600 academic papers have been published, 72 of which have been included in three indexes such as SCI, 11 provincial and ministerial scientific research awards such as Guangdong Science and Technology progress award, and municipal science and technology awards. There are 18 progress awards, 76 acceptance and appraisal results, more than 20 provincial new varieties approved, 16 national authorized patents, 22 monographs and 6 teaching materials published. In 2019, the per capita research funding of domestic universities ranked the college 109, with a per capita income of 198,000 yuan.
Foreign Exchanges and Cooperation
The College has continuously accelerated the process of integration of production, research and development, enhanced its ability to serve local and social services, actively carried out foreign exchanges and cooperation, and worked hard to provide strong technical support and talent support for regional economic and agricultural development in the implementation of the strategy of developing the country through science and education. It has signed exchange cooperation agreements with the United States, New Zealand, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries, as well as scientific and technological cooperation agreements with Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Yangjiang, Maoming and Beihai, etc.
Vision for Development
Since its establishment, through the inheritance and development of generations, the college has made great progress in various undertakings, especially in the past 20 years after the establishment of Guangdong Ocean University. The college has accelerated the teaching, scientific research and technological development by introducing high-level talents, significantly improved the teaching quality and scientific research level, moderately recruited students, and completed the education from junior college to undergraduate and from undergraduate to postgraduate levels. With the rapid development of science and technology, the college has become an important base for the cultivation and scientific research of agricultural, forestry and animal husbandry talents in South China and even in China.
To Inherit the spirit and create the brilliance of the university, the Coastal Agricultural College will further deepen the reform, comprehensively deepen the reform of education and teaching, establish a new agricultural personnel training mode to meet the national needs, improve the coastal agricultural discipline group system, highlight key disciplines and specialties, strengthen the combination of production, learning and research, further improve the education and teaching system with supporting teaching infrastructure and optimized teaching staff structure, and make every effort to prepare for the addition of first-class discipline doctoral program of crop science and animal husbandry, accelerate the construction of South China Center (Zhangjiang) of National Salt and Alkali Resistant Rice Technology Innovation Center, realize the development of teachers and the normalization of student development.
We welcome all students, scholars and friends to apply to our college and contribute their talents to achieve the Chinese nation’s bright prospect on the road to revival!
Updated in May 2020
